koolaide

FWIW – On Tuesday evening I gave in to my curiosity & DM-ed TNC re: his thoughts on the Open Thread. He didn’t respond, but as we all know, yesterday there was thread saying he’d been away for too long. I tweeted him after that, and he didn’t respond to that either. And today there’s no thread.

I give up with the guessing and/or asking and will just go with the flow.

koolaide

Bookwoman

caoil

Tide will go out a bit today, and then tonight when the tide comes in it will be at its peak. So I expect a leetle more sloshy water in the yard tomorrow morning. If all the weather upstream behaves, maybe we won’t have too much more of this.

helensprogeny

David L

Newman survived without any obvious ill effects, except that he ignored me when I got home instead of issuing his usual demands for affection. He’s back in today, as they gave us a two-day window (which is another gripe I had about this whole thing) and didn’t get to my apartment yesterday.

helensprogeny

No. I went upstairs and changed out of my work clothes. When I came back down, she stood up and hopped off the couch with a look that said “I wouldn’t deign to share with you.”
HisCat. She really hates me.

efgoldman

efgoldman

dmf

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

David L

There was almost a man on the USA’s women’s Olympic track and field team. Keelin Godsey was born a woman and came out as trans in 2005, but remains female for purposes of sports competition, since he has not yet started the physical transition. Yesterday, at the Olympic trials, he needed to be in the top three in the hammer throw to make the team. He briefly was in the top three, but got pipped by two other competitors on the second-to-last throw and missed the top three by about a foot.

Godsey had been waiting until after this summer to transition because doing so will effectively end his career. He doesn’t have the sheer size to compete on the men’s side of the sport.

This adds a different dimension to all of the standard questions about gender: Is it your body or your mind? Should it be different when you’re competing in physical competition?

koolaide

wearyvoter

Worked from home this morning (got on at 7:30); logged off at 12:30. Tomorrow is car hunting day. Wish us luck. We’re borrowing a Prius Zipcar tomorrow to get to the lots, so when we pull up in a Prius we’ll probably throw off at least one salesperson. :) (Rule 1: Fend off the service manager because the Prius is Not Ours to Trade.)

dmf

I need to get this album on CD now that I don’t have a tape player — I was just enjoying De La Soul is Dead the other day. It helps that I’m a big fan of the Avalanches, but I find this kind of hip hop extremely easy to get into, as someone that listens to a bit of indie rock and sample-heavy electronica (IE the Avalanches).

so i am stunned to discover that Zicam works exactly as advertised on TV. I took it in the first 30 minutes of being sick and have dodged the worst of the flu. R meanwhile is running on redbull and dayquil and generally looks like hell.
Drake’s determination to get some of R’s chicken soup before this illness is over is admirable, but so far ultimately futile.

koolaide

Depends on how much it costs, I guess. When I was in grad school and didn’t have a washer/dryer in my apt, I looked at what a laundry service cost. The laundry mat nearest to me w/ “we’ll do it for you” service cost too much for me to justify on my grad student noincome. But I didn’t have to deal w/ 4 flights of stairs.

MightBeLying

I was also on the 3rd floor with laundry in the basement in my last place, but the added bonus of having to go outside and walk around the building to literally the farthest part of the complex from my place might push me over the edge. I am going to see how much wash and dry service is, since the laundry here isn’t free even once I get to it!

efgoldman

We actually have our own machines in our own basement, but the cellar stairs are so steep and scary (especially since the stroke) that I occasionally go up the street and throw quarters in the machines.
Or short answer: yes.

watson42

It’s actually pretty common for people in the Boston area to outsource their laundry. Many apratment buildings don’t have laundry on site. Most people I know who rent outsource their laundry. Just consider it part of the New England experience. :)

MightBeLying

efgoldman

Well, I pick up the kids at Logan, because it gets them here two hours faster than if they take the train down, especially on a weekend.
Although I start twenty minutes closer than you do; I basically roll out of my driveway on to 295.

watson42

I know, I’m just saying that at least around here it’s common, in case MightBeLying needs some additional rationalization to outsourcing laundry. Plus when I moved here and was perplexed by the lack of widespread laundry facilities, I was told it was how people did it here in New England.

Though this thread reminds of when my brother thought picking him up at SJO was going to be easy since it’s so close to Oakland (where I was living)….at rush hour no less. :)

watson42

So….I’m supposed to start a job on Monday. It’s a contract position, 4-6 months at a large biotech/small pharma company. I can’t tell you how happy I am that I will actually be earning money again, at least for a while.

I will continue to look for something permanent, since the company has been pretty clear that this position is for a very specifc and time-limited function. But even on that end, things are picking up. I won’t celebrate until I am told all the paperwork has gone through (there have been several snafus on their end in that regard). Time to buy some booze! :)

watson42

On a related note: I had to agree to background checks, legal history check (to see if I had ever been involved in a civil or criminal case, in any capacity), a credit check and a drug screen as part of all this. I’m sorry, but wtf? I can understand verifying my employment history and checking to see if I have a criminal record but anything else? I don’t believe that what one does with their personal time/money has anything to do with how they do their jobs.

not to mention: I am one of the long term unemployed. I’m lucky that I have savings and am able to maintain good credit. But what if I weren’t and fell behind on bills because I had no income? what if I had been a complaintant in a discrimination case (for instance, if I had reported any one of many potential employers for their biased/ racist hiring practices as I was job hunting)? Would I then be permanently unemployed?

chingona

aaron singer

I (think I) have bad credit, and have applied to I don’t know how many jobs in the last 19 months, having been out of work since Nov 2010. That bad credit I am sure has hindered me getting a job, but I have absolutely no way of knowing that (do I have to agree to a credit check, or can they do that on their own?). I have had plenty of interviews, but nary an offer yet.

aaron singer

chingona

I think it usually is done when you get a job offer – around the same time they’d do the drug test – with the offer contingent on having a satisfactory result. And I think – but I’m not at all sure – that you would need to consent or sign something.

My best guess is that with the economy the way it is, employers are looking for any mechanism that allows them to cut down the pool of applicants without having to use human judgement. It is absurd to go for anything but criminal background checks, but that’s the way of things.

aaron singer

Interesting, but from what I gather they looked at salary, not levels of employment in the field. I also saw a story today that only 55% of 2011 law school graduates are employed as lawyers now. 25% are either un- or under-employed.

koolaide

efgoldman

I also saw a story today that only 55% of 2011 law school graduates are employed as lawyers now. 25% are either un- or under-employed.
Farley and Lemieux over at LGM have been flogging this for years. They have very unkind things to say about law schools.

One of my friends was a math/econ major in college. She did some analyses showing that going to anything other than the top couple of tiers of law schools has a negative ROI. And even those top tiers don’t guarantee anything these days.

aaron singer

I have a number of college friends who went to law school, some because that’s what they wanted to do and knew it, others because they thought it was an option until they knew what they wanted to do.

One of my best friends was a DOJ paralegal for 3 years, just graduated from U of C(hicago) Law, and she still had plenty of trouble finding a job. She got a one-year fellowship at a housing law firm in San Francisco. She said that her school often employs recent grads as researchers or whatever for a year to game their employment numbers into being better than they actually are. So even at the top it can be a tough slog.

Even at 28 I may be struggling and I don’t know what route or industry to go in, but I know one thing for sure: law school ain’t it.

koolaide

A friend of mine just graduated from law school (2nd career b/c she wants to be a lawyer) and continues to be amazed that law school didn’t teach her what is necessary to know to pass the bar. There’s a whole ‘nother class for that.

Bookwoman

Nor does it teach you what you need to know to practice law, at least according to my husband. That’s why it’s so useful to be work as a paralegal for a couple of years before actually going to law school – you learn what actually goes on in a law firm and see how the sausage is made, so to speak.

I feel the same way about graduate school in the sciences. It’s a good idea to work as a research tech for a few years before going to grad school because it lets you know whether or not you like the physical process of doing science. There’s a big gulf between that and just learning about science in the classroom.

cofax

Your husband is right. Law school is a good education in critical thinking, writing, and research; but it’s not a particularly good job-training program. And I wish law schools would acknowledge that not everyone is going to be a practicing attorney, and invest some of their career center time in developing other kinds of options they can direct their graduates to.

I fell into non-practicing work, but I did it all on my own without the support of my career services office. It would have been nice to get some backup.

dmf

the tragic economics of libraries aside, those are odd programs as the pull is towards technology but that changes so quickly and there really isn’t a core of theory so what is the field to be mastered?
the whole law school fiasco is a serious scam that shows how the market-driven have taken over most of higher-ed, that and what is a business undergrad degree a degree in exactly?

aaron singer

Having once been in interested in journalism, I look at J-school degrees in a similar manner. My alma mater had a small (but good) journalism program, but they made those students major in something else as their approach was that journalism is a craft, not a field of study.

As to your second point, UVA is the best current example of that, although there are unfortunately quite many. It’s not just higher-ed, either. My mom just retired from Chicago Public Schools, and privatization is taking over elementary ed in many ways, too.

koolaide

You ain’t lying, friend. I despair for the future b/c of the dismantling of free public education for all going on right now. For profits in the public school charter system siphoning off desperately needed public school funds is but one way. sigh.

aaron singer

It’s not just that, either. After-school programs run by the likes of Kaplan that do a very mediocre but get huge contracts from school districts; so-called parent organizations that are run by “reformers” (Stand for Children or similar orgs.) that are another union-breaking tool; professional development companies that don’t really teach anything but offer required PD, etc.

taylor16

“the whole law school fiasco is a serious scam that shows how the market-driven have taken over most of higher-ed,”

This is becoming evident in a lot of traditional Ph.D.-granting programs (that are supposed to lead to professorships) as well.

Higher ed enrollments are exploding, but instead of filling those classes with tenure-track profs, colleges are hiring adjuncts or temporary faculty to fill gaps without making long-term financial commitments. Meanwhile, they keep bringing in full classes of new Ph.D. students to fill (again, cheap and temporary) teaching slots and (in some cases) to bring in tuition dollars and grant money. Then they spit them out onto the academic job market, where there aren’t nearly enough tenure-track jobs to go around.

I’ve never seen good numbers on how many Ph.D. grads (especially in the humanities and social sciences) are un- or under-employed, but based on what I’ve read and the stories I’ve heard, it’s a significant proportion of them.

The movement toward running universities like businesses is going to have a lot of really significant negative ramifications, IMHO.

koolaide

dmf

yes but I have to say that the previous model of higher-ed wasn’t so good to start with, by and large there was little to no thought/effort given to student learning and or looking at how classwork did or did not translate to life after graduation and a lot of unsubstantiated talk about “critical” thinking and such.
plus most undergrad degrees, esp. social sciences and humanities, where/are really just prep for grad school but how many folks take such paths and to what ends?

taylor16

Meh. I don’t think higher ed has to be a job-prep factory. I double-majored in two social sciences AND went most of the way through a Ph.D. program, and now I manage insurance billing and general financials for two physician practices with annual billings in the tens of millions of dollars.

The accounting stuff is always a little bit challenging, but every day I see how my wishy-washy social science degrees help me be excellent at my job – through being able to do things like think critically, problem-solve, see the big picture, etc. I really balk at the idea that my degrees were just grad-school prep that gave me no value. If they are for others, it’s because no one shows those students how their degrees can translate into the real world. But it’s not because the degrees are worthless.

dmf

taylor16

Well, I’ll be honest … I don’t think I can tell you “oh, assignment X led me to be able to do task Y in my job.” But can anyone? My husband was an entrepreneurship major in the business school in college and now works at a small business doing all budgeting, marketing, etc. He says that in his opinion, his business degree taught him almost nothing useful for his job.

I will say that I think that school tasks that involved being forced to write coherently, to meld together arguments from different sources into a coherent narrative, and to see the “whole picture” of a situation helped me a lot in my job … which involves a lot of problem-solving, arguing persuasively in writing, and communicating and strategizing with our clients over the phone.

As for grad school in particular … the time I spent writing and delivering presentations in the classroom, at conferences, etc., has left me as the lead trainer and meeting organizer at our office. When my boss is pitching her services to a new client, I organize the presentation and sit in to answer questions on my feet. It’s not altogether unlike being in front of a classroom.

Does that answer your question? I’m not sure it does.

dmf

I don’t think that melding arguments (or cutting&pasting as most undergrads do) easily translates into seeing the whole picture in off the page circumstances in large part b/c was has to create the ‘frames’ for oneself and have many differing kinds of skills to get the ‘data’. I can see how
managing a classroom is like other kinds of management
but did you get much training/supervision and did the content of your coursework help here? I think that you may be giving too much credit to the system and not enuff to your own abilities, by and large undergrads are testing terribly on related tests/tasks in their senior years and beyond.
yes as I mentioned I’m not sure what an undergrad degree in business is about except an indirect lesson in the powers of marketing.

dmf

mythopoeia

My classics degree (focusing on language/literature/translation work, rather than civilization history) has trained me very well for the office jobs I have had since graduation, actually. Classes every semester for years in translating Latin and Greek forced me to be excellent at paying attention to hundreds of tiny details as a matter of routine while still focusing on the overall sense of the larger picture.

Neocortex

Just over a month ago I was a medic for the NATO Summit protests in Chicago.

I feel so emotionally detached from the experience, it’s creeping me out. I cry at everything, why not this? I’ve told people stories from it several times, and I don’t feel some big wave of emotion when I talk…just sometimes it’s like there’s a block between my brain and my mouth and it takes physical effort to get the words out, but I’m not feeling emotion at the time, just a sense of difficulty. I’ve had (lots of) dreams about it, so I guess the emotion is somewhere.

On the other hand, I looked up Chicago on Google Maps and used Street View and my text message records to find the intersection (Michigan and Cermack) where police attacked the big march, and the alley and tiny park that we used as triage sites, and that actually did (unexpectedly) almost make me cry. And I get upset by loud noises, and full of rage when people try to justify police brutality. But regarding the events themselves, and thinking about them, it’s like I stuck my emotions in a box somewhere and can’t find them most of the time. I tend to be cut off from emotions when trying to operate in high-stress situations, but normally they come back (quite dramatically) afterward, so I am puzzled.

Has anyone else had this happen? It’s not that I would rather be a crying wreck than functional, it’s just that I’ve not had this happen before and it’s creepy.

dmf

too much exposure can lead down this path, but hard to generalize, I would be more worried if you had shut-down across the board.
if we don’t take care of ourselves we aren’t much use in the care of others so pls be kind to yourself and respect those “inner” limits, these are multi-generational wars that you are in and the long view needs attention and planning.

watson42

I’ve had this happen after some seriously traumatic experiences. My armchair diagnosis of myself was mild PTSD. From what you’re decribing, it sounds like something similar. I’m not qualified to give advice, but I found the most effective thing for me was to give myself some time to process and not get hung up on responding “appropriately”.

Neocortex

Yeah, I’ve wondered about mild PTSD – I have some of the risk factors for it (preexisting anxiety disorder, dissociation during the experiences themselves – I’ve come to realize that’s probably what my highly-useful “calmness” during such situations is – and that sort of thing). It just seems silly though, on my part. I wasn’t one of the people who got beaten. I wasn’t one of the eyewitnesses to the protester getting run down by the police van (though I wasn’t very far away and saw it come out of the crowd). The house where I was staying didn’t get raided, and I didn’t get arrested or detained and interrogated. A whole lot of people there had it worse…so what’s my problem?

koolaide

A whole lot of people there had it worse…so what’s my problem?
Just because women in X country can’t drive isn’t a reason for women in the USA to not fight for equality issues in the USA. Similarly, you need to care for yourself–witnessing trauma (and witnessing trauma to folks you know) and being part of a group caring for people who have been traumatized is, in fact, experiencing trauma. Even if their pain is greater physically, that does not negate your pain.

If you can get some help now, please consider it. At the very least do some serious self care (relaxation & breathing exercises, journalism, healthy sleep/food/exercise, etc) until your better insurance kicks in. And definitely use the counseling service at your school in the fall. Some schools offer free counseling services for students (my former institution did).

Good luck take care of yourself so you can continue to care for others. I might be coming across as too stern or something and I don’t mean to. As a member of the Horde community, I want you to be safe, healthy, and happy as possible.

Neocortex

Nah, you don’t sound too stern. It’s validating to hear. And medics as a group suck at self-care – I know I do – so the reminder is good. You’re right, of course, in your first paragraph, it’s just hard to internalize when it’s a personal situation.

The school counseling is free if I pay the health center usage fee (which is on top of the health insurance premiums, and is optional). I should find out if my funding package covers it, as it does my health insurance premiums. If not, there’s no shortage of non-school-affiliated mental health professionals around here, but it would be a lot more convenient to have one nearby.

koolaide

Are you able to get mental heath care somewhere? Quality counseling somewhere? Because (no mental health professional here but…) it sounds like you’re having if not ptsd then definitely other mental health problems related to your experiences as a medic w/ the various protests. Please get mental healthcare (if at all possible, maybe a free/low cost clinic near you?). You’d get a broken bone cared for so please get your mental health cared for.

In order to care for others as a medic, you need to care for yourself.

Neocortex

I do have decent health insurance, but I’ll actually have much better insurance when I start my PhD program in the fall – the student insurance at my university is REALLY good. And I could possibly get counseling at the center there, which would be convenient. So I’ve been thinking about going for that for a while, if for no other reason than to have somebody to talk to about this stuff other than my poor husband whom I rant to too much and my friends for whom I’m talking about something alien to them. But it’s not until September and maybe I should get something sooner than that. Lord knows that if I asked my friends for therapist recommendations I’d be bombarded with them (I’m lucky to be in circles where people are very candid about mental illness).

MightBeLying

I’d say it depends on how you feel waiting until September. Is your response bothering you? From your description, it sounds like it could go either way – it’s consistent with PTSD, but it is also a normal reaction to a trauma and you might just be feeling weird that you’re not responding how you’re “supposed” to/how is normal for you. Do you journal? One of the effective therapies for PTSD involves writing out a “trauma narrative” repeatedly – doing some journaling on your own might help you work out your thoughts related to what happened and help you work through your response to it.

stephen matlock

Wow. This has me interested and yet I’m not sure what it will actually do. The target audience for this seems to be split into the sympathetic and the mildly interested. I’d guess that the mildly interested would be put off by the destruction of their faces and a laden expression of “white privilege.” It might be accurate, but it doesn’t (to my mind) attract interest. (Boy, I’m not saying change the message, but it doesn’t lead to someone wanting to investigate it for themselves as “I might be someone enjoying my white privilege.”)

This tertiary confrontation regarding racism is something I’m leaning more and more to getting engaged in within a social setting. It’s one thing to hold these values and to promulgate them; it’s another to get engaged in a point-to-point situation. I’m thinking of the people I hang with–most of them are in the “but I don’t feel this way” type of thinking. I’d like to see them explore their own thoughts and feelings in a safe and directed atmosphere so they can take the next steps.

Things might come to a head in a few weeks. We’ll see & I’ll let you know.

helensprogeny

koolaide

helensprogeny

Heh, I just saw this about 3 minutes ago. I think I just get frustrated because it feels like so often Dems allow the GOP to frame the issues and to make all the noise. (The ACA leaps to mind.) So much of what Obama has tried to do has in fact simply been stymied by the GOP Congress, and it feels like that reality gets lost a lot.

efgoldman

helensprogeny

I’m going to go meet Ron Barber, tomorrow at his first official Congress on Your Corner as our newly elected representative. Considering the last Congress on Your Corner he attended was the one he got shot at, I think it takes a certain courage to continue the tradition of meeting openly with one’s constituents.

efgoldman

Ron the Barber isn’t running for anything(*). He’s an old Francophone from Woonseckett who’s been cutting hair in the same place for going on 40 years.
(*)He may have run for city council or school committee, decades ago..

dmf

There’s a song being played on my local station by a new band, Dry the River. The song is called ‘New Ceremony’. One of the lyrics is “The angel of death came down/and crept into your bed’. This is notable because the first couple times I heard it, I thought the lyric was “The angel of death came on and crapped in your bed.” I’ve heard lyrics wrong before but this is a new record for me.

Mira

Neocortex

I am confused. I tried to post my comment above with my usual email address, and WordPress asked me to log in, which I don’t remember it ever doing before. Log in? To what? I just fill in my pseudonym and email; that’s how I’ve always commented here as far as I remember. So I used another email address, and now I am stuck in moderation. I haven’t been around much over the last month – did something change?

Neocortex

I’m on my home computer now instead of my work one, and the WP elves still want me to log in when I use my standard email address, but they don’t bother me if I use the alternate one, now that you’ve approved it.

efgoldman

chingona

We’ve had Townes Van Zandt on very heavy rotation in our house lately. Hopefully this sounds better to you than it does in my headphones. EVERYTHING is sounding like crap through them today, so I’ll have have to have faith that I’m not giving you a really poor quality recording.

chingona

aaron singer

You a Steve Earle fan? He named his son after him, and Justin Townes Earle is now a good musician on his own, more bluesy than his father or namesake.

I recommend Heartworn Highways, a mid-70s documentary on the music scene at the time in Austin; the filmmaker traveled to Townes’ trailer home in Texas, Steve Earle suggested it to him thinking that Van Zandt would thrown him out of the place and run him off as he supposedly hated the attention. Instead, they ended with a lengthy conversation, on and off film. Earle’s version of that story is quite funny. There was also a good 2004 doc on Townes’ life, Be Here To Love Me.

Bookwoman

cofax

Of course, he had to know he hadn’t a leg to stand on: his “testimony” in the Prop 8 trial was a classic own-goal. But I’m impressed all the same: not everyone has the intellectual integrity to recognize that at least some of what he believed was wrong.

JHarper2

I’m cynical on Fridays. I suspect the change in societal views on marriage equality was cutting into his fundraising for his Marriage Institute. Good to change the public stance though, shows that things are moving in a good direction.
I know that I can’t know what is in his heart, or his reasons, and I’m not usually this sour and cynical, but today I am.

A few weeks ago the climbing gym I go to regularly was starting some construction. Instead of shutting down the gym, they tried to ventilate the place while epoxy or some other industrial-grade adhesive was curing. The entire place reeked. One of the other climbers there that evening remarked “it feels like getting high in middle school”. I tried to get in some climbing, but only lasted about 30 minutes before I had to leave. It was bad enough that I felt like I probably should have waited a while longer outside before getting into my car to drive home.

dmf

To obtain everything by divine sufficiency —
Holiday eves, permissions, useful tips,
Life’s beautiful things —
Talent, virtue, impunity,
The inclination to see others home,
The status of traveler,
The convenience of boarding early so as to get a seat,
And something’s always missing, a glass, a breeze, a phrase,
And the more one invents and enjoys, the more life hurts.
-Fernando Pessoa

wearyvoter

It’s damned hard not to have issues with body image. Look at the grief those two commentators on Fox were spouting about Hillary Clinton looking like she’s not trying anymore, tired, etc. (I’m surprised they didn’t use the word “cankle” anywhere in a sentence.)

efgoldman

wearyvoter

Past a certain point, it’s counter productive to try to look like you’re still 25. All the plastic surgery, and all the collagen and botox in the world eventually makes one look like one is trying out for the remake of “Death Becomes Her.”

efgoldman

David L

David L

I almost added a “…like Sean Hannity.” to the end of that Sawyer post, then realized I couldn’t remember for sure whether it was him or someone else at Fox that was involved.

My point of mentioning her age and experience as a beauty queen and such is just to point out that she has pretty much been in a position where she has been judged by her appearance, fairly or unfairly, for her entire adult life.

Hillary, for her part, seems to really have let loose with the Secretary of State job the last couple years and decided to have as much fun with it as she can. It’s a side of her that I’m not sure I’ve really seen before. That, not her appearance, is the reason I don’t really believe the gossip that she’s going to run again in 2016.

efgoldman

I doubt she’ll run, 2016 or any other time. She’ll be what? Close to or over 70 by then?
I am disappointed that it appears she’s going to resign after the election, win or lose. She has been a great sec of state.

R_Bargis

Best job in college? Mine was transcribing a 17th century document an antiques dealer was trying to sell (I’d read every paleography book I could get my hands on and enough 18th century documents to puzzle it out). I took my payment in ambrotypes. Best steady job was working as a housekeeper for a very eccentric old teacher who did things like store his academic journals in his kitchen cabinets (he didn’t cook).

dave in texas

Y’all, I can’t decide if I’m incredibly depressed or incredibly furious right now. Or equal parts of both. I had to write a memorial for a 16-year-old boy who had been bullied into committing suicide because he was gay .Now, writing under the imprimatur of a governmental agency often means that I can’t really say what I’d like to say, and boy, is this ever one of those occasions.

What I had in mind was something along the lines of ‘the failure of society to exhibit even the smallest strands of decency led to the death of this young man with no consequences whatsoever for the perpetrators of this vile act’ and so on. What I went with was ‘_____ was an exemplary young man whose limitless potential was tragically cut short and whose struggle to overcome intolerance and cruelty and find his way in life can serve as a motivation to all people to treat others with dignity and respect.’

This shit just makes me weep, y’all, really it does.

David L

stephen matlock

efgoldman

Man, writing eulogies is fking *HARD!* Even without the extra baggage and restriction you dealt with in this case. I’m a good, glib, experienced public speaker; that part was easy, but the writing was the killer. One was for a college mentor (bout twenty years later) and the other was for my mom.

dave in texas

I do memorials pretty regularly as a part of my job, which I’m afraid I have to be kind of circumspect about. What I actually do is ghostwrite for others, so I have to bear in mind that what I say is going out with someone else’s name on it and carries at least an implication of state policy.

I can barely imagine doing one for one of my parents, although I’m pretty sure it will fall to me when the time comes.

Most of the ones I do don’t bother me that much; they’re largely for people who’ve lived full lives. Some of them, though, are a punch in the gut. All those fallen soldiers during Iraq were hard to do. Young children. This one.